Adviser to the Finance Minister, Khurram Schehzad, on Friday announced that the federal budget for the fiscal year 2025-26 will be presented on June 10.
Earlier, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal announced that the federal government will present the next fiscal year’s budget on June 2, with a 16 per cent lower development allocation of Rs921 billion, resulting in the likely closure of about 200 ongoing development projects.
The adviser published a post on X today, which read, “The Federal Budget for FY 2025–26 of Pakistan will be presented on June 10, 2025.
“The Pakistan Economic Survey 2024–25 will be released a day before the Federal Budget, on June 9, 2025,” he added.
Last year, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb presented his first federal budget with a total outlay of Rs18.9 trillion, which analysts said was broadly “in line with IMF guidelines”.
Aurangzeb, during the budget presentation, said that the goal was to widen the tax base to avoid burdening existing taxpayers.
Pakistan’s total revenue for the current fiscal year was budgeted at Rs17,815bn. After accounting for provincial transfers of Rs7,438bn, the net revenue stood at Rs10,377bn, representing a significant 48.7pc increase from the fiscal year 2023-24.
The government also set an ambitious tax collection target for the Federal Board of Revenue at Rs12,970bn, a 38pc increase from last year’s goal.
Earlier on Friday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that its executive board approved funding for Pakistan after the country “met all the targets” under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme, adding that the loan programme for Islamabad was only for stabilisation of foreign exchange reserves and not related to the budget financing.
During a press briefing in Washington DC, IMF Director of the Communications Department, Julie Kozack, said, “Our Board found that Pakistan had indeed met all of the targets. It had made progress on some of the reforms, and for that reason, the Board went ahead and approved the programme.”
